” It is not technically a “Defensive Knife Use” since the hero of our story was swinging a Samurai katana, but we are going to count it. Unlike the “Middle-Aged Mormon Ninja Bishop” who simply needed to brandish a sword to thwart an assault, a 49-year old Argentinian homeowner went positively Medieval on the quartet of thugs who broke into his home recently. Things did not go well for the burglars.

“ Mr Costa, 49, and his wife Christina, 48, were asleep when the men, who were armed with two pistols, broke in at around 3.30am.

Police commissioner Mariano Zarate said: ‘In a moment when the attackers were not paying attention, the house owner took a samurai sword and defended himself, injuring the attackers and making them run away…

…Bleeding heavily, the driver lost control of the vehicle and hit a stationary car forcing all four to go to hospital for emergency treatment.

Police initially arrested two men and one woman, but another man who hid was forced to come back to hospital the next day due to serious sword injuries.” “

” A tourist in Buenos Aires has a gun pulled on him by a thief and the whole incident was caught by his GoPro camera on his helmet.

The gripping video shows Mike being cut off by a motorcycle as he rides his bike. The criminal then pulls out a gun and demands his backpack. Mike doesn’t understand his request and drops the bike and runs.”

” A gargantuan, long-necked dinosaur as big as a two-story house and weighing as much as 12 elephants once stalked a flower-dotted earth some 77 million years ago in what is now Argentina.

That’s where paleontologists discovered the beast’s bones, naming it Dreadnoughtus schrani after steel warships. The dinosaur is a sauropod, a type of long-necked, four-legged dinosaur that only ate plants.”

” “I think the big herbivores don’t get their due for being” intimidating, said study lead author Ken Lacovara, an associate professor of paleontology and geology at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “I thought it should have a fearsome name.”

Lacovara named the dinosaur after dreadnaughts, warships that were created in the early 20th century. “For a time, they were basically impervious to attack,” Lacovara told Live Science. “I thought that Dreadnoughtus would be a good name for these dinosaurs, which does two things: It means ‘fears nothing,’ and this dinosaur would have had nothing to fear. It also connotes something big like a battleship.” “

” Between high inflation and political drama, Argentina has not had its best year. But the Latin American country is still reaching for the stars. Quite literally: Next year it plans to put its first satellite in space, using its own technology, from Argentine soil. That’s something that its rival and South America’s biggest economy, Brazil, can’t claim yet. While an international aerospace powerhouse, Brazil does not launch its own satellites, relying on rockets owned by other countries.

The first experimental rocket from the Tronador II project will be tested before the end of November, according to Argentina’s Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (National Space Activities Commission, or CONAE). The launch has been ready for months, but success is dependent on climate and atmospheric conditions, which made the agency wait until the austral spring, said Executive Director Conrado Varotto.”

The more the merrier we say . God speed to the Argentinians . There is room in space for all .

This is Villa Epecuen, an Argentine Ghost town that’s slowly emerging from the depths of the neighboring lake for the first time in 25 years.

But soon Villa Epecuen’s growth would come to a screeching halt. In 1980 the area experienced a slow but drastic climate shift that dumped large amounts of rain in the lake. Because Lago Epecuen had no outlet to drain the influx of water, the lake slowly swelled, according to NASA. By 1985 the lake’s waters were already testing the limits of the dike that protected the village. On November 10, 1985 a severe storm blew through the area, causing the water level in Lago Epecuen to swell until it broke through the dike. A torrent of water cascaded into town, inundating the streets.

Over the next eight years the lake would continue to grow, until eventually, in 1993, Villa Epecuen sat 33 feet below the surface of Lago Epecuen. By then visits from tourists had long since dried out, and all but one of Villa Epecuen’s habitants had left behind their dreams of a life on the lake, according to Vice. ”

” From 1976 until 1983, Argentina was governed by a series of US-backed military dictators who ruled with iron fists and crushed the regime’s opponents, many of them students, trade unionists, journalists and leftists. Kidnapping, torture, murder by death squads and disappearances characterized this brutal ‘Dirty War,’ and many of the leading perpetrators, including two junta leaders and the military dictator Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, were trained by the United States in kidnapping, torture, assassination and democracy suppression at the School of the Americans in Panama. As many as 30,000 people were killed or disappeared during this horrific period, and many children and babies were stolen from parents imprisoned in concentration camps or murdered by the regime.

“We have much to be sorry for,” Father Ruben Captianio told the New York Times in 2007. “The attitude of the Church was scandalously close to the dictatorship to such an extent that I would say it was of a sinful degree.”

A 1995 lawsuit filed by a human rights lawyer alleges that Bergoglio, who was leading the local Jesuit community by the time the military junta seized power in 1976, was involved in the kidnapping of two of his fellow Jesuit priests, Orlando Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were tortured by navy personnel before being dumped in a field, drugged and semi-naked, five months later.Bergoglio was also silent in the wake of Father Angelelli’s assassination, even as other leading Argentine clergy condemned the murder. He was quick, however, to hail the slain priest as a “martyr” years later in more democratic times.

“History condemns him,” Fortunato Mallimacci, a former dean at the University of Buenos Aires, once said of Bergoglio. “It shows him to be opposed to all innovation in the church and above all, during the dictatorship, it shows he was very cozy with the dictatorship.”

Human rights attorney Myriam Bregman told the AP that “the dictatorship could not have operated [so brutally] without this key support.” “

New Pope: Pope Francis I

” VATICAN CITY, March 13 (UPI) — Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires is the new pope, the first Latin American in history, taking the papal name of Francis Wednesday.

The fact that he chose a reformer’s name was seen as a signal he might make great changes in the church. Like Francis, Bergoglio was known for his simplicity, humility and rejection of material comforts.

He is also the first non-European pope in history, and is an Argentinian, though of Italian ancestry.

The 76-year-old pope appeared on the balcony above a packed St. Peter’s Square before more than 100,000 cheering people who braved cold and rainy weather.

Before being introduced, the new pope was clad in his papal soutane in the “room of tears” behind the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. The room is so named because new popes have been overcome with emotion.”

Impressed with his leadership skills, the Society of Jesus promoted Bergoglio and he served as provincial for Argentina from 1973 to 1979. He was transferred in 1980 to become the rector of the seminray in San Miguel where had had studied. He served in that capacity until 1986. He completed his doctoral dissertation in Germany and returned to his homeland to serve as confessor and spiritual director in Córdoba.”

“Bergoglio succeeded Cardinal Quarracino on February 28, 1998. He was concurrently named ordinary for Eastern Catholics in Argentina, who lacked their own prelate. Pope John Paul II summoned the newly named archbishop to the consistory of February 21, 2001 in Vatican City and elevated Bergoglio with the papal honors of a cardinal. He was named to the Cardinal-Priest of Saint Robert Bellarmino.”

La Eucaristía – Cardenal Bergoglio

The 68-year-old trained chemist and son of a railway worker has been a cardinal since 2001 and is widely seen as being open and compassionate.

He stands out for his humility, living in a modest apartment, rather than his luxury official residence.

“In favour of Bergoglio is his pastoral attitude, as they say in the Church – his relationship with the people,” says Leandro Pastor, a philosophy professor at the University of Buenos Aires, who has known Cardinal Bergoglio for 25 years.

“He’s a very simple man. He’s very austere. And also, I think he’s an intelligent man and someone who is very good at communicating.”

He impressed fellow prelates in 2001 when he skilfully helped to manage a synod of bishops in Rome.

He’s as uncompromising as Pope John Paul II, in terms of the principles of the Church

Monsignor Osvaldo Musto

Buenos Aires’ cardinal is also a strong advocate for the poor. And, as a Latin American, he comes from a region which is home to around half the world’s billion or so Catholics.”

” Some have said my warnings about a coming civil war between makers and takers are exaggerated. It’s true that Argentina’s politicians have been waging class warfare since Juan and Eva Peron–and they aren’t fazed when it turns bloody. Obama and the Democrats are relative newcomers to the game. But Argentina reveals who really suffers when those who create a nation’s wealth get mugged by those who spend it–as just happened this week in Washington.

It’s the poor and the middle class, the very ones big government says it’s trying to protect. ”